Every 3rd below-5 kid in Haryana stunted

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 19

Child malnutrition continues to be unacceptably high in most major states of India, though some progress on this front has been made in the past 10 years.

New trends contained in the first phase findings of National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16), which the government released today, show that in seven of the 15 states under study, either half of all under-five children or at least more than one in every three are stunted, meaning short for their age.

Bihar leads the country on this dismal indicator with 48.3 per cent of all its under-five children stunted (down from 55.6 per cent in NFHS-3 conducted in 2005-06). MP and Meghalaya are the only other two states with more than 40 per cent of all under-five children stunted. States with more than 30 per cent of all under-five children in the stunted category are Haryana (34 pc), Uttarakhand (33.5 pc) and West Bengal (32.5 pc).

In the North, Haryana and Uttarakhand have made some gains on the nutrition front but not enough to reverse the trends. NFHS-4 gives three sets of data on child malnutrition – stunting (low height for age). Wasting (low weight for height) and underweight (low weight for age).

In Haryana, the number of wasted children has in fact increased from 19.1 pc in 2005 to 21.2 pc in 2015-16 although the percentage of stunted children has fallen from 45.7 ten years ago to 34 now. Of all under-five children in Haryana, again one in every three (29.4 per cent) are underweight. This percentage was 39.6 in 2005-06.

For Uttarakhand also, wasting trends have worsened with 19.5 per cent of under five children now wasted as against 18.8 per cent in 2005. Uttarakhand has 26.6 per cent of all under five children in the underweight category.

The government is, however, taking heart from the fact that for the first time in 10 years, in nine major states and UTs, less than one thirds of children are stunted. Goa has the lowest percentage of stunted children in India at 20.1 pc.

Joint Secretary Health Rakesh Kumar speaking on the nutrition data says, “The most important set of NFHS-4 data is the nutrition data which we are getting after 10 years. For the rest of the indicators like child sex ratio, infant mortality etc we have other data sources such as the Census and the Sample Registration System respectively. But for nutrition, NFHS is the only data source.”

States covered in the first phase of NFHS 4 are Andhra, Andaman and Nicobar islands, Bihar, Goa, Haryana, Karnataka, MP, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripuera, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.